Distributed process control systems are used in chemical, pharmaceutical, petroleum, oil and gas, metals and mining, pulp and paper, or other types of industrial process plants to control one or more industrial processes to thereby generate or produce one or more physical products from raw materials and/or other types of source materials. As such, distributed process control systems typically include one or more process controllers and input/output (I/O) devices communicatively coupled to at least one host or operator interface device and to one or more field devices via analog, digital or combined analog/digital buses, or via a wireless communication link or network. The field devices, which may be, for example, valves, valve positioners, switches, and transmitters (e.g., temperature, pressure, level and flow rate sensors), are located within the process environment and generally perform physical or process control functions, such as opening or closing valves, or measuring process parameters to control one or more industrial processes executing within the process plant or system. Smart field devices, such as field devices conforming to the well-known Fieldbus protocol may also perform control calculations, alarming functions, and other control functions commonly implemented within a controller. The process controllers, which are also typically located within the plant environment, receive signals indicative of process measurements made by sensors or field devices and/or other information pertaining to the field devices and execute a controller application that runs, for example, different control modules that make process control decisions, generate control signals based on the received information, and coordinate with the control modules or blocks being performed in the field devices, such as HART®, Wireless HART®, and FOUNDATION® Fieldbus field devices. The control modules in the controller send the control signals over the communication lines or links to the field devices to thereby control the operation of at least a portion of the process plant or system.
Information from the field devices and the controller is usually made available over a data highway to one or more other hardware devices, such as operator interfaces, personal computers, or computing devices, data historians, report generators, centralized databases, or other centralized administrative computing devices that are typically, but not always, placed in control rooms or other locations away from the harsher plant environment. Each of these hardware devices typically, though not always, is centralized across the process plant or across a portion of the process plant. These hardware devices run applications that may, for example, enable an operator to view current statuses and operations of processes that are running within the plant, perform functions with respect to controlling a process and/or operating the process plant, such as changing settings of the process control routine, modifying the operation of the control modules within the controllers or the field devices, viewing alarms generated by field devices and controllers, simulating the operation of the process for the purpose of training personnel or testing the process control software, keeping and updating a configuration database, etc. The data highway utilized by the hardware devices, controllers, and field devices may include a wired communication path, a wireless communication path, or a combination of wired and wireless communication paths.
As an example, the DeltaV™ control system, sold by Emerson, includes multiple applications stored within and executed by different user interface devices located at diverse places within a process plant, and in some instances, remotely from the process plant. Each of these applications provides a user interface (UI) to allow a user (e.g., a configuration engineer, an operator, a maintenance technician, etc.) to view and/or modify aspects of the process plant operation and configuration. Throughout this specification, the phrase “user interface” or “UI” is used to refer to an application or screen that allows a user to view or modify the configuration, operation, or status of the process plant. Similarly, the phrase “user interface device” or “UI device” is used herein to refer to a device on which a user interface is operating, whether that device is stationary (e.g., a workstation, wall-mounted display, process control device display, etc.) or mobile (e.g., a laptop computer, tablet computer, smartphone, etc.).
A configuration application, which resides in one or more user workstations or computing devices included in a configuration environment of a process plant, enables configuration engineers and/or other types of users to create or change process control modules and download these process control modules via a data highway to dedicated distributed controllers that operate in an operating environment of the process plant (which is also referred to interchangeably herein as an “operations environment” of the process plant) to control one or more processes during runtime or real-time operations. Typically, these control modules are made up of communicatively interconnected function blocks, which perform functions within the control scheme based on inputs thereto and which provide outputs to other function blocks within the control scheme. Each dedicated controller and, in some cases, one or more field devices, stores and executes a respective controller application that runs the control modules assigned and downloaded thereto to implement actual process control functionality.
The configuration application also allows configuration engineers and/or other users to create or change operator Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) or display views that are used by an operator viewing application to display data (e.g., as the data is generated in real-time during runtime operations of the process plant) to an operator and to enable the operator to change various settings, such as set points, within the process control routines during runtime operations. The operator viewing applications that provide the operator HMIs or display views are executed on one or more user interface devices (e.g., operator workstations, operator tablets, operator mobile devices, etc.) included in the operations environment of the process plant (or on one or more remote computing devices in communicative connection with the operator workstations and the data highway). The operator HMIs or display views receive data from the controller applications via the data highway and display this data to operators or other users using the UIs at the user interface devices. Similarly, the operator HMIs or display views may also receive data (e.g., real time data) from other control components or elements included in the operating environment of the process plant other than control modules, such as controllers, process controllers, field devices, I/O cards or devices, other types of hardware devices, units, areas, and the like. A data historian application is typically stored in and executed by a data historian device that collects and stores some or all of the data provided across the data highway while a configuration database application may run in a still further computer attached to the data highway to store the current process control routine configuration, the current operator display configuration, and data associated therewith. Alternatively, the configuration database may be located in the same workstation as the configuration application.
As noted above, the operator viewing applications typically execute in one or more of the operator user interface devices and provide operator HMIs or display views to the operator or maintenance persons regarding the operating state of the control system, control components, and/or devices within the plant, e.g., while the plant is operating in real-time or runtime to control one or more industrial processes. Generally speaking, operator HMIs or display views are used by operators in day-to-day operations (which may, for example, be 24/7 operations) of the process running in the process plant to view and respond to real-time conditions within the process and/or the process plant. At least some of these operator HMIs or display views may take the form of, for example, alarming displays that receive alarms generated by controllers or devices within the process plant, control displays indicating the operating state of the controllers and other devices within the process plant, maintenance displays indicating the operating state of the devices within the process plant, etc. Display views typically execute in the runtime or real-time operating environment of the process plant, and are generally configured to present, in known manners, information or data received from process control modules, devices, and/or other control objects that are also operating within the runtime or real-time operating environment of the process plant. In some known systems, display views have a graphical element (e.g., a graphical representation or graphic) that is associated with a physical or logical element included in the operating environment and that is communicatively tied to the physical or logical element to receive data about the physical or logical element and updates thereto over time, e.g., during runtime operations of the process plant. The graphical element may be configured or defined to dynamically change its appearance on the display screen based on the received data to illustrate, for example, that a tank is half full, to illustrate the flow measured by a flow sensor, etc. As such, as the data provided by the physical or logical element in the operating environment of the process plant changes over time (e.g., is repeatedly or continually updated over time), the appearance of the corresponding graphical element is changed on the display screen accordingly.
In some currently-known operator display configuration architectures for industrial process control systems, each operator workstation independently manages its own alarms and access to real-time control data that is generated by process control modules, devices, and/or other control objects. As such, to customize an operator HMI or display view for a particular operator workstation, custom graphical properties, values, and/or configurations of various display view elements (e.g., graphical and other types of elements) that are to be presented on the runtime display view are defined and associated with the display view within a graphical configuration environment, and the definition or configuration of the display view is downloaded from the configuration environment into the particular operator workstation of the operating environment for execution. Often, custom scripts are programmed into the configuration of the display view so that desired behavior and/or appearances of the various display view elements and/or of the display view itself are executed at the particular operator workstation. Additionally, if the display view appearance or behavior is desired to be modified or changed for the particular operator workstation, typically the modifications must be applied to the configuration of the display view in the graphical configuration environment, and then the modified configuration must be downloaded from the configuration environment for execution at the particular operator workstation. In most cases, this requires that the particular operator workstation cease its execution of the current display view in order for the modified display view configuration to be received and executed at the particular operator workstation.
In other currently-known operator display configuration architectures for industrial process control systems, a common configuration for a display view is downloaded from the graphical configuration environment to multiple operator workstations. To effect particular, customized appearances and/or behaviors of the display view at a particular operator workstation, though, during runtime the particular operator workstation at which the display view is executing must query or otherwise communicate with the graphical configuration environment to obtain necessary information (such as particular configurations of various graphics, runtime values, and/or other information) to effect or implement the desired customized appearances and/or behaviors of the display view at the particular operator workstation. As modern-day process plants may include hundreds of operator workstations, the messages that are sent and received between operator workstations and back-end display configuration servers add a significant load to process plant communication networks.
Recently, the Center for Operator Performance (COP), a research consortium that addresses human capabilities and limitations in industrial process control operating environments through research, collaboration, and human factors engineering, and the International Society of Automation (ISA) have been working to help advance industrial process control system Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) and their ease of use, for example, by suggesting improvements and guidelines in Human Centered Design (HCD). For example, the American National Standard ANSI/ISA-101.01.-2015 entitled “Human Machine Interfaces for Process Automation Systems” and approved on Jul. 9, 2015 addresses “the philosophy, design, implementation, operation, and maintenance of Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) for process automated systems including multiple work processes throughout the HMI lifecycle . . . [t]he standard defines the terminology and models to develop and HMI in the work processes recommended to effectively maintain the HMI throughout the lifecycle” (ANSI/ISA-101.01-2015, page 9).